Political Threats: Law Officers' Challenge

Clinton office drama an example of tricky hostage situations.

ByABC News
November 30, 2007, 7:18 PM

Nov. 30, 2007— -- When lives are at stake, police wrestle with whether to meet the demands of hostage takers to talk with a third party -- in Friday's case, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

Leeland Eisenberg, a man police say had a history of emotional problems, is alleged to have walked into the Clinton campaign's Rochester, N.H., office, asking to see the senator. He appeared to have a pipe bomb-like structure attached to his body, and took four hostages, though he eventually released them.

"It's a really tricky situation," former FBI agent and hostage negotiator Brad Garrett said of situations like the one at the campaign office, "because you have to vet the situation out to the nth degree, meaning you have to fully understand why the hostage taker wants to talk to someone else."

The other problem, Garrett said, is that the person a hostage taker wants to talk to, in this case the former first lady, is not a trained hostage negotiator and could inadvertently say something that would set the suspect off.

"If you just put someone on the phone, you have, first of all, no control of what they're going to say," Garrett said.

"You don't know what's going to trigger him," Garrett said. "If he's got a hostage in there, he could kill the hostage. He could blow himself up, he could blow the building up. I mean, it's a very dicey situation."

Garrett says barricade situations can be very violent if the situation takes a wrong turn, so untrained negotiators are seldom used.

"They're not really trained to focus on the important key words and attitude, and behavior of the person they're talking to," he said.

Standard police procedure involves establishing communication with the suspect and trying to build a relationship with him. They try to keep him calm. And they will attempt to convince him to release any hostages.

In 1977, a man holding a police officer hostage, demanded to speak with President Jimmy Carter. Carter held a press conference to say that he would gladly talk to the man after the incident was resolved.